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This Amazing Slow Moon Rise Is Not A Timelapse

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Sometimes the best timelapse movies are not time lapse at all. This amazing moon rising footage was taken by photographer Mark Gee.

What seems to be a part of the ET bicycle sequence is really a shot of the moon taken with a Canon ID MkIV stacked with a 500mm f/4L lens and a 2x extender, giving the equivalent focal length of 1300mm. (this is about $14,429 worth of gear). The hill in the shot is 2.1km from the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand, and is practically across the other side of the city.[Read More…]

Is That A Lighting Kit In Your Trunk, Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

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The Frugal Film Maker by Scott Eggleston is a great resource if you wanna take DIYing from stills to Video. In this installment Scott talks about a his always-in-the-trunk lighting kit. The kit is basically a plastic tote that can be a life saver whenever you arrive at a location that needs basic lighting.

The kit includes a set of hacked worklights, clamp lights, various bulbs and extension cords, a few low wattage light sources and various other goodies. And, of course, gaffers tape.

This got me thinking about compiling a similar kit for photography, something that will have some very basic and cheap stuff that I can always leave in the trunk of my car and not be worried about someone stealing it. I will share more on that as the kit is built. In the meantime I was wondering about your basic kits. Share in the comments.[Read More…]

Polaroid Camera Made From Popsicle Sticks

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Brighton based photographer and product design undergrad Maxim Grew probably ate way to many Popsicle and had a few too many visits to the doctor. With the resulting Popsicle sticks and Tongue depressors he built a working Polaroid camera.

Maxim used a few off the shelf components like a lens, a Polaroid film holder and some Fuji-FP 100C, but the body and bellows of the camera are 100% lollipop sticks and cardboard. Amazingly enough – the camera works perfectly.

Hit the jump for Maxim’s movie showing how the camera was build, and for a  sample photo.[Read More…]

Every Ramp Agent Is Really An Angel In Disguise

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I know that this is not 100% light painting per se, but it has light wands and long exposures, so what’s the heck.

You know those guys that tell the plane where to go while they are on the ground? THey are called ramp agents and they tell the plane where to go by waiving a special wand which is very similar to the wand used in light paintings. And just like waiving your hands in the snow creates snow angels, the ramp agents directing the planes reveals their true secret identity as Ramp Angels. True fact!

H/T to Kris Klop for the photo.[Read More…]

How The Insane Bar Scene From “The Other Guys” Was Shot

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One of my favorite scenes of all time is the crazy Bullet Time scene in the bar in “The Other Guys” featuring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg.

In that scene Allen and Terry go through a whole night of crazy drinking in under a minute with the entire scene frozen in bullet time. Unlike other bullet time scenes, like the one in the matrix, this scene was shot using a single camera on rails. The camera was programmed to repeatedly follow the same path while different elements of the scene were filmed. This combined with stuntmen who can hold pose for a long time and a bunch of CGI effect created one of the best bullet time shots I know.

Here is a behind the scenes look that shows how the final composite was done.[Read More…]

Photography From The Future: Anti Photography Glasses

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It is one thing to have your photo taken in public. It is a whole different thing to have multiple photos of you taken in public, tagged and stored in a way that enables search. Think facebook image tagging crossed with images streaming from ATM machines, street cameras and security cams. Sounds scary right?

According to Professor Isao Echizen from Tokyo’s National Institute of Informatics there are ways to avoid constant tagging of your face. One such way is to constantly tilt your head. Another less pain inducing option is to use a pair of glasses designed by Prof. Echizen specially designed to disable face recognition.[Read More…]

Giving An Old Nikkormat A New Life As A Sony NEX-5N

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Photo.net user Brendan Taylor could not settle the cognitive dissonance between his love for vintage cameras and his love for digital photography. The only resolution to this upcoming madness was to meshup two cameras a Nikon Nikkormat EL and a Sony NEX 5N.

This allowed Brendan to keep the vintage look of the Nikkormat while getting access to the advanced features of digital photography, including the NEX’s touch screen.[Read More…]

How To Build a Portable DIY Travel Jib / Shoulder Rig

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A few days ago we shared a quick sneak peak at the RotoRig – A light weight jib that resembles Light Craft’s trapezist, Zolinger’s ZP1800 and DSLR devices MK4. It’s the kind of jib (or crane) that lets you do amazing Hollywood style sweeping shots. But, in some aspects it is even better. If you are a solo shooter and have to carry your gear alone, the RotoRig saves you from having to carry multiple rigs. It doubles as a video shoulder rig and triples as a hand held jib. We also shared a shot flick shot entirely with the rig in its three positions, and the fact that it can so easily transforms really makes me sad that they did not have a movie autobot back in the days.

The response has been overwhelming and basically everyone said the same thing? How do you build one? In fact, Amazon’s stock of the monopods was nuked.

Well, Chad Bredahl is not the guy to keep you waiting and he put up a video showing how the rig was built. He also shared a complete parts list (as noted below). So everyone who grabbed the monopods off Amazon before the price went up can go ahead and complete the build. For the rest of you, Walmart has them for $9.99.[Read More…]

Shooting Underwater Has To Be Creative Both Artistically And Technically

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A while back photographer Benjamin Von Wong was invited to the Underwater Realm set to take a group portrait of the actors and crew.

If you cringe at the thought of taking a big group shot, you would probably cry with the added difficultly of managing everything underwater (while being videographed by Erwan Cloarec) I was really unaware of all the added challenges of shooting underwater.

From water safety personal, through using weights to speed up descent to weighting down the wigs so they don’t float. It seems that everything we know as photographer has to be relearned for underwater.

The video and Ben’s post provide an interesting look into that world, as well as to some of the unique features of shooting underwater, like the inability to use radio slaves (which can be solved with optical wires), the “natural” depth of field that water provides and what’s it’s like working in the water in general. The BTS and more photos after the jump.[Read More…]

A Clever DIY Alarm For your Camera Bag

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If you ever took a camera bag to a restaurant, coffee shop or anywhere that makes you put it on the floor, you know that can be really be a peace killer. And you are constantly worried that someone might snatch it.

You try placing the bag under the seat / have one of the straps loop around the chair legs and put it in your lap. Not really convenient.

Youtue user Kipkay came up with a clever $2.5 hack that may not protect your bag, but will definitely let you know if someone is trying to pick it up.

The system is based on a $2 impact alarm (the kind that alerts on broken windows) with an added $0.5 tilt switch. Once the device is turned on any tilt, such as a bag grab, will trigger the alarm. (As with everything, there are commercial options for this, but they are not nearly as cool)

Now here is the clever part (back in my programming days we used to call those “features”). The alarm has not off switch. Once it goes on it can only be turned off by drowning it, smashing it or…applying a magnet to the tilt switch, which is not that trivial if you just picked up this bag and started running. Where would you even get a magnet.

[$2 Alarm Protects Your Stuff!! via Photojojo | PetaPixel][Read More…]

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